Well, I certainly have done some silly things in my life but trying to capture lightning on my 5D without a special remote is not only silly but embarrassing. What remote do I need? Thanks! Jarv
I use the TC-80N3, and have captured one storm so far. I have also seen some lightning triggers that mount onto your hot shoe, but I have no experience with them.
lots of long exposures (at night) is a good way. its very hit or miss, just use a tripod and remote release on bulb and as soon as a flash happens stop the expossure. and then start again
If you have a Canon camera body that accepts the TC-80N3 listed above, you can set things up for un attended shooting. You will want an empty memory card that has plenty of capacity. You get mounted on a good tripod, set your focus to manual and adjust focus, and find a manual exposure that makes a nice night shot showing land or city detail. You then set up the remote to shoot a large number of shots at that exposure, say 600 shots at 10 seconds each. You then start the process, and come back latter. For the example above, you would get 100 minutes of shots, with the shutter open above 95% of the time, so you will get almost every strike that occurs. The trick is being safely in the right place at the right time with the right gear.
Roland W wrote:
If you have a Canon camera body that accepts the TC-80N3 listed above, you can set things up for un attended shooting. You will want an empty memory card that has plenty of capacity. You get mounted on a good tripod, set your focus to manual and adjust focus, and find a manual exposure that makes a nice night shot showing land or city detail. You then set up the remote to shoot a large number of shots at that exposure, say 600 shots at 10 seconds each. You then start the process, and come back latter. For the example above, you would get 100 minutes of shots, with the shutter open above 95% of the time, so you will get almost every strike that occurs. The trick is being safely in the right place at the right time with the right gear....Show more →
I've done it that way, but be forewarned: there will be LOTS of junk photos to sort through, unless it's a really active storm.
Earlier in the evening, when there is still light and color in the sky, you can make use of digital's much ballyhooed 'free shots' feature and machine gun to your heat's content! Put the camera on multi-shot, manual or Av exposure, set aperture to match the lightning's brightness/distance, set shutter speed if necessary, then mash the release button and let the camera blaze away. Shoot RAW. As mentioned, you'll get plenty of misses, bit these are easy to cull using any RAW processing software that displays thumbnails. Don't allow the RAW software to apply any sharpening, lest you get nasty halos around the bright bolts.
Keep in mind that the lightning trigger gizmos will not capture the fine web of branching leaders that precede the main discharge. Instead, you'll get wimpy (IMO) 'pencil' lightning generated by the return stroke.
Even without a release, you can still catch perfectly decent lightning at night. Set a long, non-bulb, exposure. Cover the lens with black craft paper, etc., release shutter, wait a second or two for any vibration to settle, then move the light shield out of the way.
I highly suggest you do the following. Put a CyberSync radio remote on the camera. Put camera on a tripod some distance away. Sit inside your car. Trip shutter with the radio remote. If you can see lightning, it is close enough to kill you. Do not fool around with it.
